Pro-government supporters and security forces on Sunday confronted protesters loyal to former Bolivian president Evo Morales in a street melee, the second such violent escalation in a week as fears grew of further unrest in the Andean nation.
The protesters and counterprotesters hurled firecrackers, homemade explosives and stones at each other across a dusty sprawl in the city of El Alto, while riot police unleashed tear gas into the crowds. At least eight people were injured, the Bolivian Ministry of Health said.
The standoff — which erupted while thousands of Bolivians supporting Morales continued a week-long 190km march to the capital, La Paz — spoke to the depth of the schism in Bolivian politics ahead of next year’s presidential election.
Photo: AP
Morales and his former economy minister-turned-bitter-rival, Bolivian President Luis Arce, are vying to lead Bolivia’s long-dominant socialist party, MAS, into next year’s vote. Their power struggle has paralyzed the government, exacerbated the depletion of Bolivia’s foreign exchange reserves and fueled street protests.
The rolling political crisis began in 2019, when Morales — who came to power in 2006 — was forced to resign after being re-elected to a third term in a vote marred by accusations of fraud and mass protests. He left the nation, but made a dramatic political comeback a year later, returning to find he had retained widespread support among poor and indigenous Bolivians.
Mobilized by Morales, bound together by misery over Bolivia’s economic meltdown and outraged by Arce’s efforts to block the candidacy of their polarizing former leader, the marchers on Sunday stopped on their sixth day of walking to sleep at an encampment 11km from El Alto, a sprawling city on a plateau above Bolivia’s capital.
Seeking to portray the march as a reflection of Bolivia’s indigenous highland culture as much as a political exercise, Morales — surrounded by supporters waving the multicolored flag dear to indigenous Andeans that the leftist leader turned into a patriotic symbol when he served as the nation’s first indigenous president — praised his supporters’ “peace and enthusiasm.”
Other Morales supporters broke off from the march and pressed into the scrappy outskirts of El Alto, where security forces and supporters of Arce had massed in anticipation of their arrival. The protesters and counterprotesters clashed in the neighborhood of Ventilla as acrid smoke from burning tires and thick clouds of tear gas coursed through the streets.
Each side blamed the other for the violence.
Morales accused Arce’s government of deploying “paramilitary groups to incite violence,” busing officers into El Alto to stir up trouble — a claim echoed by Bolivia’s ombudsman.
“It’s very sad that this government doesn’t pay attention to its conscience,” said Benita Cruz, a Morales supporter at the scene of the clashes. “They are repressing the poor and most humble people.”
In increasingly dramatic terms, Arce — who earlier this year faced what he described as a military coup attempt — has accused Morales of seeking to sabotage his government.
The unrest offered a possible preview for the coming days, as Morales and his thousands of supporters have promised to continue their so-called “March to Save Bolivia” into La Paz, despite vows by Arce’s supporters to prevent them.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS